Here we go again - 'The abortion debate'

Hearing to review abortion ruling
Pro-choice campaigners say the time has come for Parliament to review the abortion law as the latest battle in a legal war over the issue begins today.

The Court of Appeal will revisit a landmark High Court decision, made by Justice Forrest Miller in 2008, that the law was being interpreted more liberally than Parliament intended and there was "reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions".

That ruling was a response to legal action taken by anti-abortion group Right to Life against the government-appointed Abortion Supervisory Committee, which reviews the way the law is followed. Both the committee and Right to Life have appealed against the decision.

I don't know about you but there is an eye rolling quality in the abortion debate for me. You hear people jump up and down about this frightened and timid bit of legislation and wonder, 'are you seriously suggesting a woman who didn't want to have a baby should be forced to have it'? How much more mentally damaging would that be? Serious suggestion to remove the legal right to a medical procedure decided upon by the woman it involves is about as ridiculous as asking to limit a woman's right to vote.

Pro-life campaigners are arguing in the Court of Appeal that the current legislation requiring woman to leap through two sets of moral panic constructed consultant hoops before they can get a medical abortion is not being legally applied, and as such most abortions are illegal which sets the stage for a Court of Appeal challenge to the entire right of abortions in NZ.

I'm not sure but, ‘It’s not your body, it’s God’s body’ style of social law seems more Taliban than OECD member country.

The Pro-Life campaigners go on to claim that abortion counseling should be independent of abortion providers insinuating that abortion providers are incentivised to harvest fetuses for profit, which is of course about as offensive to all the people working tirelessly in sexual health as it would be to Christians by claiming all these fetuses they save will all be adopted by Christian families eager to indoctrinate another soldier for Christ.

The worst part of the vicious abortion debate is that if you look hard enough for incentives in those you don’t trust, you can find anything. Surely what is most important is that our sisters have available to them the legal right to a safe medical abortion if they choose to make that decision, telling women what they can do with their bodies and what they can’t do with their bodies is what we are supposedly fighting against in Afghanistan.